Accelerating Retrofits in Commercial Buildings

Helping commercial building owners to reduce emissions, lower costs and improve building performance. This pilot project is now closed.

About the pilot project

In Calgary and Edmonton, the building stock accounts for 40 to 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve meaningful emissions reductions and address our current climate crisis, we need to reduce energy use in our building sector.

Read the full announcement

Deep energy retrofits of our current building stock need to be done quickly and at scale. Traditional auditing processes can be time-consuming and expensive, making it difficult for building owners to retrofit their buildings.

To help identify energy efficiency improvements in commercial buildings faster, digitized approaches can be used to rapidly collect and present building information.

That is why Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, with support from the RBC Foundation’s Tech for Nature, and in partnership with software provider, Audette, launched our Accelerating Retrofits in Commercial Buildings pilot project in September 2021.

Why Participate?

Building owners received a digital, simplified, low-carbon retrofit plan and accompanying business case.

By participating in this pilot project, commercial building owners were shown retrofit opportunities that will allow them to achieve emissions reductions, lower costs and improve building performance.

Pilot Project Results

We worked with 7 multifamily and commercial building owners from Calgary and Edmonton to analyze 78 buildings, providing a detailed low-carbon analysis of their building portfolios.

View Building Analysis Dashboard

13Mt of greenhouse gas savings were identified, over 22 energy efficiency measures, which could result in $674 million of carbon cost savings for the building owners over the next 28 years. Learn more about our process and what we learned in our final report.

Dashboard Accessibility Note:

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Next Steps

The participating building owners, equipped with low-carbon retrofit plans, can pursue opportunities to implement their building upgrades, including working with alternate financing models.

Thank you to our pilot project partners

What our partners are saying

“We are very excited to work with Alberta building owners to provide a cost-effective and user-friendly process for low-carbon transition planning. We’ve seen first hand how digital access to information about a portfolio’s buildings, equipment, and energy consumption can unearth valuable opportunities to reduce cost, improve asset value, and attract progressive tenants.”
Christopher Naismith, CEO, Audette
“This project provides an opportunity to identify potential retrofit projects that exist in Calgary’s and Edmonton’s commercial building stock and explore financing made possible by aggregating these projects. New financing sources and mechanisms are entering the Alberta market and this provides an opportunity to catalyze investment in the commercial building industry to advance low-carbon goals.”
Mike Mellross, Program Director, Alberta Ecotrust Foundation
“We are very excited to work with Alberta building owners to provide a cost-effective and user-friendly process for low-carbon transition planning. We’ve seen first hand how digital access to information about a portfolio’s buildings, equipment, and energy consumption can unearth valuable opportunities to reduce cost, improve asset value, and attract progressive tenants.”
Christopher Naismith, CEO, Audette
“This project provides an opportunity to identify potential retrofit projects that exist in Calgary’s and Edmonton’s commercial building stock and explore financing made possible by aggregating these projects. New financing sources and mechanisms are entering the Alberta market and this provides an opportunity to catalyze investment in the commercial building industry to advance low-carbon goals.”
Mike Mellross, Program Director, Alberta Ecotrust Foundation

What participants are saying

“Audette’s platform and Ecotrust’s climate leadership will drive actionable insights that will help meet Osgoode’s goals of reducing our carbon footprint in our residential properties.”
Geoff Carran, Senior Director of Investments with Osgoode Properties.
“Audette’s platform and Ecotrust’s climate leadership will drive actionable insights that will help meet Osgoode’s goals of reducing our carbon footprint in our residential properties.”
Geoff Carran, Senior Director of Investments with Osgoode Properties.
“Audette’s platform and Ecotrust’s climate leadership will drive actionable insights that will help meet Osgoode’s goals of reducing our carbon footprint in our residential properties.”
Geoff Carran, Senior Director of Investments with Osgoode Properties.

About the Climate Innovation Fund

This project is possible with funding from Alberta Ecotrust's Climate Innovation Fund. The Climate Innovation Fund targets the major urban greenhouse gas emissions sources in Calgary and Edmonton.

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